The Friend Zone
by michael1812
Summary: When Juliet's heart is broken, the world ends for her. Quite literally. It's up to the Doctor to find out what went wrong.
The moon was a dim point far away in the sky, barely reflected in the lights of the river Thames at night, when Juliet and Martin strolled by. It was the only light in the sky as far as they could tell, and it wouldn't be long before they were right.

Juliet's cheeks were flushed and sore from smiling and Martin's hair looked just perfect. When her heel broke, she tipped over and fell right into his handsome arms. A perfect night for dancing had ended on a high note with them just walking home and talking till morning, and ignoring the strange homeless man rifling through the bins.

This would have been one of those stories they could have told to their children one day at the breakfast table while they were too busy being mesmerized by cartoons on the telly. Instead it wound up being one of those stories told to a best friend the morning after an untimely late-night text, because one week after the walk home Martin had sent her one and it hadn't landed well. All those images she had in her head of what the future would look like; they were all just fanfiction now.

Juliet was walking past the same riverbank when she got the message, across the same city-spanning bridge she walked with whatshisname the week before when the world ended. It broke her heart too. Her legs seemed furious, as if nothing would stand in their way of getting home, while her hands fidgeted with the dials on her phone. Juliet's voice cracked as her best friend asked what happened over the phone. There were tears.

"Martin broke up with me," Juliet said, no longer fighting the emotions rushing over her. "He said we don't have a future together. He just wants to be friends. Bastard."

Her best friend no doubt would have given her the best advice any woman could give another woman on how to handle heartbreak, but instead the line was blank, a mere foreboding crackle at the other end reminding Juliet there used to be a person on the other end of that conversation.

"Hello?"

Juliet looked behind her.

"Oh god, there's some strange man staring at me," she said. "I'm not gonna stop till I get home."

Her roommates were awfully quiet when she stormed up the flat's staircase late at night and crashed headfirst into the nearest pillow. Juliet groaned and cried until the hurt faded into sleep. She didn't move again until the first ray of light touched her window and an elderly man in a grey wig and a black hoodie burst through her door. It took her a moment to realize it wasn't a wig; that was just his hair.

"YOU!" the man cried out, and his eyes seemed to bulge out of his face as he said it. Juliet screamed and crawled from one end of the couch to the other, still wearing the clothes, shoes and jacket she'd fallen asleep in the previous century, desperate to elude his mere presence.

"Why are you shouting?" he said, but she was barely in a state to comprehend English. Or Gallifreyan. "And what's wrong with your eyes? Did you do something to your eyes?"

Running mascara had turned her face into something resembling tribal war paint.

As she came to her senses, and saw the door had just been unlocked and not torn off its hinges as she at first had imagined in her state of half slumber, she calmed down and connected the dots.

"Did my father send you? He's really pushing it now! I'm not on drugs and I don't need another driver! Tell him that! Tell him to leave me alone! Especially Sunday mornings at…. 7 o'clock?!"

She grabbed a pillow and tried to crush herself with it. The man simply looked on with a tilt of his head, in utter fascination and befuddlement. He took another glance around the room, seemed to scan it with some sort of instrument, but in the end the instrument just lead him back to her.

"Go away or make me some coffee! I don't care which!"

The man raised an eyebrow, before deciding to enter the kitchen. He came back with his own concoction and set it down on the coffee table in front of her.

"I couldn't find any biscuits," he added.

Juliet still wasn't awake. Her hair was a mess.

"Why are you still here? Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," the man said.

"Oh, god, not another doctor."

"Don't worry, I'm not that kind of Doctor," he said as Juliet took a gulp of the drink.

She spat it back out again almost instantly. "That isn't coffee."

"I couldn't find any beans. So I used pepper, water, rice and a potted plant."

She spat twice. "You used dirt?!"

"That's what coffee beans are made of. That's what you are made of and probably everything in the universe come to think of it. You should show some respect. I too… should show some respect."

"You respect the coffee then, idiot."

When handed to him, the Doctor cautiously accepted, sniffed the hot air coming from the mug and took a zip. He put it back down again.

"Needs more pepper," he said.

"You're funny," Juliet said. "And I have no idea who you are."

"I'm the last man left in the universe," he said.

"Ew."

"Ew?"

"I'm going to get dressed now. Please leave."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can."

"I really can't, you know."

"You're going to get out of my apartment."

"There is no out! There is no in! There's just here! Just this! Haven't you noticed? Haven't you looked out the window yet?"

"I'm seriously not in the mood right now."

"What could be more important than this?"

"I literally just broke up with my boyfriend, okay? My world's just ended."

The Doctor arched his eyebrows. "Yeah, pretty much."

He pointed to the window again.

"I don't care!" Juliet said.

"You don't care about the world ending?"

"My world has ended!"

"Look, I'm thinking we're getting our wires crossed here, because I have no idea what you're talking about. What world are you living in? Well, considering the nature of our circumstances, what world ARE you living in? Really? Have you checked your world recently? Your apartment's never been this big before."

"What the hell are you talking about? And what the hell is that bright light?"

She moved the curtains. Just more light. Forever. And nothing else.

"But there's…."

"Yep."

"But how…"

The Doctor nodded, waiting for her to catch up.

"Come on, come on… I haven't got all day. This apartment's all that's left of reality. This room. Your kitchen. Your bathroom. Your bedroom. The most expensive real estate in the world. I can't imagine the state of your rent."

Juliet reached for her phone and searched for the contacts of her parents, her friends, her coworkers, pressed one and then put the device to her ear.

"There's no signal here. Or wifi. Believe me, I tried."

"Would you shut up now?!"

The Doctor mouthed the words 'sorry'. "I'm just saying…"

"Shut up." As she waved a hand at him to be quiet, the ring on her finger flashed in the light of the void. The Doctor closed the curtains.

"This isn't happening."

The Doctor rolled his eyes.

"Let's skip to the next question shall we? This is happening! But why is it happening TO YOU? Why you? What's so special about you?"

When she stopped trying to call people she checked every corner of her living space, every nook and cranny of her walls, doors and windows. She threw a coaster out the window and watched it evaporate into nothing.

"You're not actually saying my heartbreak BROKE the universe?"

The Doctor frowned. "That would be preposterous. No-one's saying that. But is there anything that happened to you recently, anything at all that could be relevant to what's going on out there?"

Juliet shook her head. "Nothing ever happens to me."

"There's no such thing as nothing. There's always something. A mysterious light in the sky? A strange bubbling at the lake? Did you walk through a crack in the wall at the back of a changing room? Did a man with the face of a pig try to send you flowers? Did you meet a man with two left hands by any chance? Or a woman dressed like Mary Poppins who wants to rule the world?"

"No," Juliet said. "He never got me flowers."

"There has to be something! Because it can't be your love life, right? Your love life can't be that important to the universe? Can it? Could it? Could the world really be that silly?"

"Martin was the one," Juliet said. "Or at least, that's what I thought. I loved him."

"Bring me your laptop," the Doctor said. "Now."

Juliet found her laptop underneath the pillow she slept on and handed it to the Doctor, who flipped it open and seemed to boost it with that strange device of his again. It emitted a bright blue light and buzzed with a very high-pitched noise.

"There we go," the Doctor said. "Future Wikipedia. Now type in your name."

Juliet hesitated.

"Come on. You don't have to be afraid."

"Is that what I think it is? Because I don't need to know when I'll die."

"Fine, I'll read it. Just tell me your name."

"Juliet Inverly."

"Never heard of it," the Doctor said. "But that's good. That means time can still be fixed. There. Oh, you're right. He is the one. Quite unheard of, actually, true love. You should have that trademarked."

"It really says that? Martin and I are together in the future?"

"You were meant to be happy ever after. Something changed that. Something caused this."

"But how can we unfix it? To get Martin back, I'd need some kind of time machine."

"Oh, you mean this old thing?" the Doctor said, and with a flick of his device, something large, blue and groaning seemed to light up and appear out of nowhere in the middle of her apartment.

Juliet smiled. "Oh, I can't wait to see the look on Martin's face when he sees this."

"Martin who?"


End file.
